Summary Of The Book Of Negroes By Lawrence Hill

In the novel, The Book of Negroes, Lawrence Hill writes a fictional account of an African woman’s struggle from enslavement to freedom. Hill researched the subject matter extensively, the book itself taking place during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries which includes historical events such as the American Revolution, the British military’s own Book of Negroes, as well as insights into one of the root causes of the American Civil War. The narrative begins with an elderly Aminata Diallo. She is a free woman in the city of London and sets about recalling her harrowing story. When Aminata was eleven years old, she was abducted from her village and forced to walk in a coffle for miles and miles to a slave ship. Aminata manages to survive

By the late 1800s, the gap between the Northern and Southern states grow larger as the North becomes more industrialized and less dependent on slave labour. Meanwhile, the Southern states remain reliant on slave labour to maintain their plantations and their wealth. This disparity eventually leads to a battle between the Union and the Confederates; from the Battle of Fort Sumter on April 12-13, 1861, to the American Civil War. Hill describes the different treatment towards Black faces between South Carolina and New York City. Compared to the harsh treatment towards slaves in South Carolina, “New York is a place of opportunities” (Hill 244). Hill had done an admirable job of completely immersing the reader in the 18th century, you feel more in tune with the Africans, while the whites seem strange, alien, bewildering, contradictory. It’s not as simple as “white man, bad; black man, victim” the book is honest about the complexities of history without making any excuse for anyone of any colour. Aside from Hill’s honest depiction of human nature within The Book of Negroes, he misses the historical reality about the underlying process of emancipation in America, instead he focuses on the British abolitionist

When Christopher Columbus ‘discovered’ the “New World”, his treatment of the indigenous people was barbaric. Friar Bartolome de las Casas argued against the treatment of native people as well as the enslavement of African people, “since no attempts had been made to convert them to Christianity, it was not legal” (Clayton). Although De Las Casas won his case, the ruling was revered a year later by the Spanish crown because it made it difficult to take advantage of the great wealth of the “New World”. Even after many Africans and Indigenous peoples converted to Christianity, the prohibition against enslaving Christians did not apply. Over the span of slavery, a “science” claimed that both Africans and Indigenous Peoples were less intelligent, less civilized and less human than Europeans. While it may not have been morally acceptable to enslave other human beings, it became acceptable to enslave those thought to be of inferior races. In The Book of Negroes, Aminata refused to be looked upon as lesser than what she’s worth, “I am no wench. I am a wife. I am a mother. Aren’t I a woman?”, she refused to understand her place in the white world she was placed in. Even after her husband and children were taken from her she does not succumb to anger or hatred. The horrors and